Early Readers – Dirk Bones and the Mystery of the Missing Books

Dirk Bones, skeletal reporter is back in another beginning reader adventure. When Dirk shows up to interview an author, they discover that one of his books is missing. A clue is found in the form of a strange leaf, so Dirk goes to the library to find out more about plants. There he discovers that more books have gone missing, and more leaves have been found. What could possible be stealing the books?

This is an I Can Read Beginning Reader Level 1 book intended as “simple sentences for eager new readers.” Some pages are half illustration/half text with two to three sentences. Other pages are full text, with a full page illustration opposite. The sentences are simple, though the earliest readers may be daunted by what at first appears to be a lot of text.

I love that Dirk’s first impulse upon finding a strange leaf was to head to the library to research it, though I could wish that he had been able to locate more information there. As in the previous book, Dirk’s investigative success owes quite a bit more to coincidence than it does to detecting. I would have liked to see more of a traditional mystery that kids could try to follow along with, predicting the solution to the puzzle.